Benchy on Ultimaker 5S

[Framar 38]

Hello all, 

 

I just finished the annual maintenance of our Ultimaker S5 (lubrification of axis, belt tension adjustment, cleaning feeders, squaring of Y and Y axis, manual bed leveling). Everything was fine except the squaring of X and Y axis were off by quite a lot... I then printed a benchy in the hope of any improvement in print quality (Just to let you know what my 1-1/2 year of experience have been painful). 

 

I first use PLA from Materio and there was a lot of over extrusion all around. I then think that it might be caused by the  filament grade/inconsistency. I then switch on sylver metallic PLA from Ultimaker. The Benchy came out OK, but the seam is visible, there are some layer inconsistency, there is some ghosting and the overhang are not handle correctly.

I feel the S5 cooling fan are under performing and ghosting is impossible to be fixed.

 

I used a 0,15mm layer height and use the default basic cura slicing settings. 

 

How can using only the ultimaker ecosystem (printer, slicer, material) results in less sastifying results (Compare to an Ender3 and Prusa i3mk3s)??? 

 

Do you have any tips on how to improve prints? Can you share your S5 benchy prints?

 

[NBull 14]

Hi Framar, what version of Cura are you using?

 

This is printed as 0.15 basic profile no changes to settings.
I have tried to mimic you picture angles.

 

Photos of 3d prints are a weird thing, somethings will not look as bad on photo and others will look worse then they are! 
I dont think the print in your picture is that bad, I have seen much worse come from a s5. 

 

I have a layer mismatch at the same spot on the hull as you. I think its more a combination of model angle and slicing settings, more then a layer shift. but yes its an inaccuracy.

 

The ghosting in my opinion is more likely do to speed, then the cooling fans. The s5 needs to print dead slow to not ghost.

 

The drooping in your windows are most likely do to to hige print tempter. it can also be because your fan is not working properly as you mentioned. so be sure that there are no filament stringing trapped in the fan's.

 

Here are som more Photos of my print. sorry for the photo quality but im not at the studio today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Framar 38]

Thanks For thr reply.

 

I see more ghosting on your model that mine. So I guess this is what I would have to expect from a S5... I would expect better result from a  $7,750 CAD 3D printer considering that I get better prints from the Prusa i3 Mk3 kit... 

To get me wrong, I love my S5 but I think price/performance ratio is not competitive...

[gr5 2,167]

Don't forget that S5 prints larger objects than i3 and don't forget that S5 prints Nylon and other high temp materials easily that are difficult or impossible on i3 without modification.  Also S5 is a dual printer that is quite good at printing PVA support which is a difficult feat.

 

If you want to print:

1) Only PLA

and

2) Don't mind PLA support (don't need dissolvable support)

and

3) only Small parts

 

Then the S5 is definitely not for you.  There are other printers that are much cheaper and print with even better quality (for a given speed) like the i3 or the um2go.

 

There are other features of the S5 that the i3 does not have that I did not mention but the 3 above are the most important I think.

[NBull 14]

Hej Gr5, I would actually like to see how your s5 prints a Benchy.
Also you Smithy 🙂

 

In general I would have liked to see more people join in. 
it's what 0.35 usd. and 2 hours for a Benchy. 

 

The s5 is sold as a Hige end PLA printer, it should be possible to print a Benchy on it. Whether it is a large format printer or not.

[Ishy 8]

I'll do one on my S5 to compare if you do one on your Prusa.

[Smithy 1,144]

9 hours ago, NBull said:

Also you Smithy 🙂

Aye aye captain 🙂 

Joking aside, will do a print over the weekend.

[glx 23]

Hi,

I've seen you like Benchys, so I just printed two 😄. 

Since I only do this for hobby-use I sadly can't afford (or justify 😅) an S5.

• The blue one was the first ever thing I printed on my Ultimaker 2+ with no clue of the printer and what PLA-filament that was, just used the suggested and factory-reset values. That's kind of old already.
• The grey one is from my old i3 Mega, also printed with PLA from which I don't have a clue what brand or exact temperature-range it is, also just used the default settings suggested by Cura.
• The white one is also printed on my Ultimaker 2+ but with adjusted acceleration-settings on the printer and an, over the time I use the material, slightly tweaked print-profile. This is not printed in PLA, it's Polycarbonate. 

All of them are printed with 0.15mm layerheight and were sliced with Cura 4.4.1 (the blue one obviously with an older version, since it's kind of two years old now).

The only cleanup is the removed brim from the polycarbonate one, the rest is as it came of the printer.

The white one sadly contains some discolored material that collected up at the nozzle.

 

So here are some pictures: (there follows some text below the photos 😄)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I cannot really compare the results since those are the only three Benchys I ever printed.

 

To be honest, the first thing I thought after printing the very first (blue) Benchy was the same as OP's: "Why the hell can't this ~2000€ machine print a proper Benchy?!". But then I thought a bit further, I bought the Ultimaker not to print cheap-ass PLA, that could also be done with my i3 Mega, I bought it to print more advanced materials that can't be printed at all on that machine. 

So after learning what the Ultimaker can do, playing around with the settings and using different materials over the time I got some better understanding of what I'm doing and what can be changed to get some aspects better. So after knowing the tools it can also produce a nice (I think it's nice) Benchy. 

 

I think you can't expect buying a 6000€ printer will automatically get you perfect prints, it's like buying a expensive Mercedes-AMG, go to a random racetrack and expect the new world-record for that track. You have to know the car, you have to know the track and how they play together, you even might have to consider the weather and stuff. So in my opinion to get good results you need a solid, reliable printer (that has it's price, if that has to be an S5 will stay an open question that everyone has to answer on it's own I think). In my experience it's quite more important to know the materials you use and how they behave in certain conditions. What's also quite important is the design of the printed parts, I think you shouldn't blame the printer, that it can't print something that was intentionally designed not to be printed well (without adjustments) 🤷‍♂️.

 

Oh that became quite a long post (my first ever here in the forum 😄) and maybe a bit offtopic, so long story short, in my opinion an expensive printer doesn't make perfect prints on it's own, you have to tell him how to do it properly.

 

I also like to print CaliCats over Benchys to test stuff:

 

[Smithy 1,144]

So here a Benchy from the S5 with 0.15 profile and all speeds set to 35mm/sec

 

[Ishy 8]

Interested to know if you're pleased with that Smithy?

Quote

 

 

[Smithy 1,144]

4 minutes ago, Ishy said:

Interested to know if you're pleased with that Smithy?

To be honest - no 🙂

[Ishy 8]

11 minutes ago, Smithy said:

To be honest - no 🙂

That's what I thought. I'll do one on Monday when I go back to work and post some pics up. Not tried it so be interesting.

[glx 23]

16 minutes ago, Smithy said:

To be honest - no 🙂

 

Hm that looks really not that nice for the low speed it is printed 🤔. Are maybe the acceleration-settings a bit high? My 2+ does similar prints (see my blue Benchy) with the factory set quite high settings. 

[Smithy 1,144]

I do another one right now, with pure intent visual settings of the latest Cura. We will see....